If you thought the Roberts nomination was interesting
Chief Justice William Rehnquist has tied. A New York Times article has been rushed online-- there are some really awful typos. Confirmation hearings for John Rberts are scheduled to start in less than 72 hours.
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FYI, we can turn on an option to prevent spam where you have to type in a confirmation code from an image to post...
actually I was wondering if we could make it a private blog or something? Certain people who have to worry about getting tenure don't want to post if it's a public blog...
Anyhoo, I almost missed the end of an exciting season opening football game because Rehnquist chose a very inconvenient time to pass away. I don't mind them interupting the game to tell us but did they have to go on and on about it with a synopsis of his life and achievements when there was only ~4min left in playing time and the news was up next anyway? I was trying to be good and support my new home team.
Right well anyway, so does that mean that Roberts is going to replace the empty spot or is he still replacing Sandra Day O'Connor?
It doesn't appear that blogger lets you have a truly private blog... There may be other free blog services that would allow this. Otherwise, we can probably host a password protected blog on someone's erver.
As for Roberts, he was nominated to the post of Assosciate Justice, so he'll still be replacing O'Connor. Bush could change the nomination, but that's probably not a particularly practical option. He's likely to nominate someone else to be Chief Justice. If I were advising Bush, though, I'd suggest that he try to work out something with Senate Dems where he nominates one of the 4 more liberal justices as Chief and gets Roberts and another conservative as Assosciate Justices.
There was an episode of The West Wing in which two vacancies opened up on the Supreme Court simultaneously, and the administration nominated both a conservative and a staunch liberal in order to get enough consensus in the Senate to get the second one through. That's not Bush's style, but it's certainly an option this administration may want to consider.
Note that in The West Wing, the administration engineered the second opening so they could nominate a candidate that was otherwise too liberal to get throught the Senate. I'm sure after Roberts is confirmed, the White House would be more than willing to make the same deal if, say, Souter were to resign.
If Pat Robertson keeps getting his anti-Christian wishes granted, there may be further vacancies yet to come.
"Anyhoo, I almost missed the end of an exciting season opening football game because Rehnquist chose a very inconvenient time to pass away."
LOL! Spoken like a true football fan, Delphine. :) I agree with you completely on the general brainlessness of TV stations when it comes to football coverage, although as you know, 4 minutes of football time at the end of a game is more like 20 minutes of Earth time.
As for the SCOTUS vacancy, I think they might elevate Roberts to Chief Justice and then nominate an ultra-conservative for the second spot. Although W. doesn't have a whole lot of political capital at the moment. It's going to be interesting.
Does anyone else think that The West Wing has lost much of its flair since Aaron Sorkin stopped writing the episodes? Now that it's going to be up against The Simpsons on Sunday nights I think this coming season is going to be its last.
Because Bush is in a bit of a weakened position now, I can't imagine him nominating Roberts for Chief Justice. Bush has a much more politically palatable position nominating a hard-line conservative to replace the very conservative Rehnquist since that isn't likely to move the court significantly to the right. Roberts is likely to sail through confirmation hearings as the centrist replacement to O'Connor and has a much greater opportunity to move the court.
My gut is that Bush would rather have the amenable Roberts as Chief Justice and his next hard-line nominee as an Assosciate Justice, but I don't see that he has the political capital to make it happen. Were I in Karl Rove's shoes, I'd also be keeping the possibility of giving Democrats a Chief Justice Breyer in order to get their next nominee approved.
Well, I guess I was wrong. Looks like Roberts is going to be the new Chief Justice. That's going to make the next nomination fight a doozy!
Well according to the nytimes online, aparently Bush is going to nominate Roberts for the Chief Justice spot...
This should be interesting then who will replace O'Connor? any bets?
I would also like to say that today at work (we don't get labor day off...) I was not the only one complaining about the way ABC cut off the football game for a way too long winded anouncement about Rehnquist. ;)
Bob Denver died. Early reports are that Bush is considering nominating John Roberts as the new Gilligan.
I was under the impression that Cheney was the Skipper and Bush was Gilligan. Bonus points if you can match remaining cabinet officials to members of the Gilligan's Island cast with explanations. I assume the first two are self-explanatory :-)
All of the Cabinet officials are playing the role of the millionaire.
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